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Friday, April 27, 2012

It's hard to believe that this white phalenopsis orchid, my Miss Alabaster, is as old as my son. Five years they've been with us, blooming year-round.

Miss Alabaster acquired a companion, Miss Fuchsia, about two years later; she blooms bright pinkish-purple flowers. Over the years, I've learned these ladies' likes and dislikes. They like the humidity and light in my bathroom. They do not like the openness of our living/kitchen area downstairs. They don't like to be watered too often, but they do yearn to be taken care of and loved.

Miss Fuchsia blooms bigger and fewer flowers (3 to 5 at a time), while Miss Alabaster creates numerous, cascading blossoms (5 to 7 at a time). They each do their own thing, they are independent women with a mind of their own. Unbeknownst to them, they keep a similar flowering rhythm, keeping their cycle of life in synch.

Miss Fuchsia has a keiki (Hawaiian for 'child' or 'baby'). It stems from a bud of the currently flowering stem, and prolongs the flowering phase of that particular stem. These orchids will produce two or three keikis from each stem. When the flowers wilt, the oldest leaf will yellow and dry. Then a new leaf will grow, followed by a new stem. These phalenopsis have been repotted once.

While they do not offer significant gift for the olfactory sense, they more than make up for it for the visual sense. I'm in awe of their beauty all year round. My heart still skips a beat whenever I discover a new keiki or a new stem, or anticipate how many flowers are in line for full bloom.

He sat in his wall-to-wall glass window office staring out, waiting. Upon her entrance, he felt the
bright light illuminate her lovely presence.

He turned slowly to face her, his clenched fists stuffed inside
his white coat pockets. He wearily made
contact with her fatigued but serene eyes.
He exhaled as he noticed that her cheeks had revived their faint, rosy glow beneath
the strands of greying hair above her ears; she wore that familiar smile he had
long missed seeing. She had had a tough few
weeks, but she finally felt strong enough to drop by after her appointment. Between his patients and her treatment
schedule, they had both looked forward to sharing a quick lunch together.

“I’m here to take my date to lunch, even if only at the boring
cafeteria,” she declared.

He returned a worn smile and said, “Let me put this chart away
and we’ll be off.”

He couldn’t. He just couldn’t
tell her his morning patient’s diagnosis.
The images of that scan in his chart from the oncologist's report seared into
his souring eyes. At the appointment, he
gave him his word. He would have to honor
that doctor-patient confidentiality. Now
gazing through his beautiful wife’s fragile eyes, he begged the deafening scream
inside his head to cease. As he put
away the patient’s chart, he also stuffed his promise into the same envelope, and
sealed it away in confidence. He couldn’t
tell which he hated more: that unforgiving Oath or his reluctant Word.

“Guess who came by earlier?” he said as casually as he
could possibly sound.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

From the common perspective
just across the field,
they are tufts of silky
and colorful upside-down bells
standing atop their green anchor
and leafy embellishments.
We see them happily fluttering
in the gentle breeze,
playfully bumping noggins,
and joyfully holding hands.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

a: the
portion of the vertebrate central nervous system enclosed in the skull
and continuous with the spinal cord through the foramen magnum that is
composed of neurons and supporting and nutritive structures (as glia)
and that integrates sensory information from inside and outside the body
in controlling autonomic function (as heartbeat and respiration), in
coordinating and directing correlated motor responses, and in the
process of learning — compare

2

a (1): intellect, mind <has a clever brain>(2): intellectual endowment : intelligence —often used in plural <plenty ofbrains in that family>b (1): a very intelligent or intellectual person (2): the chief planner within a group —usually used in plural <she's thebrains behind their success>